What A Word Is Forhttp://whatawordisfor.com
Mon, 18 Sep 2017 05:46:51 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.2The Internet is An Infinite Christmas Wishlisthttp://whatawordisfor.com/the-internet-is-an-infinite-christmas-wishlist/
Mon, 01 Feb 2016 17:49:18 +0000http://whatawordisfor.com/?p=42“There’s a lot going on today,” I say. “There’s a lot. Are you participating, or simply taking it all in?”

You cross your arms, swiping at a phone app in your exposed hand, angling away. You prop yourself against the bus stop railing, against the frame of an advertisement for a big data management company.

“Seriously, there’s almost too much going on,” I say, leaning into your phone space. “Today is fast, today is slathered in the unflinching velocity of itself – there’s no other choice but to participate.”

The phone dingdongs. You inch the screen closer to your face.

“What do you mean?” you say, dart-scanning a push notification. “I’m busy responding to a message.”

“You’re busy? This is busy?” I say. “What do you mean? Are you participating or are you just responding?”

“I’m responding to something, hold on,” you sigh. A bus passes by, but it’s not our bus. Not yet.

My hand reaches for your screen-aimed thumbs: “You know,” I whisper, “you know, phones are going to be obsolete in the next decade, right? It’s going to be AR and VR, straight up. We’ll consume content that way, you know, but in new ways. Are you participating in that transition, or are you just going to respond to it, too?”

“Dude,” you say. “Dude. Don’t touch my phone.”

“We’re going to simultaneously revert to old media delivery systems and attach to new ones,” I tell you now, my fingers wrapping around your phone. “Our interaction with technology will become more human, and that’ll free us up to, say, read more books or shop in retail spaces afresh. How we take in and how we find what interests us — it’s going to be weird, man.”

I gently wrestle and grapple your phone from you. It is playful. You don’t laugh, but it is so playful and fun! “This is playful and fun!” I say.

“And this thing,” halfway scaled up the data management advertisement I am saying to you now, “is going to take on a very different role, for reals.”

You’re probably screaming – that’s what it sounds like – but I know you’re only a little flustered about the future, is all. We all are. It’s flustering. “I bet it’s flustering!” I say.

“Dude!” you say. “My phone!”

“Looks like you’re willing to scale the data, too, and reclaim how you want to participate in what’s important.”

I am waving the phone back and forth, air-traffic-controlling you to rise, to pursue, to scale boldly up to where we will go.

“I have a message to respond to,” I say, palm outward and in your face. “Hold on.”

You’ve stopped. So has the bus. The bus is waiting on us.

“What did you, OK, hey, what did you say –” you stammer, phone back in your hand. You are twisting the phone around, getting close to it, shaking it. I have hopped down. I am one foot in the bus, which now waits for us. We are waiting, and the bus is waiting, and you’re still scaling the data and examining your phone.

“I told the person you’ll see them in about a decade,” I say. “You’ll literally see them, and talk to them as though face-to-face, and talk to them about your book club even though they’re in Germany like you’re both hunched over a warm coffee.”

“How did you know we were in a book club?” you say. It starts to sprinkle outside. “How did you know who that was? You couldn’t have known, man.”

“Statements without data are just opinions,” I say as I step into the bus. “I only looked at the last response you’d made and then participated, in this instance, in the conversation at large.”

]]>Let’shttp://whatawordisfor.com/77-2/
Tue, 22 Dec 2015 10:37:17 +0000http://whatawordisfor.com/?p=77“It is time to self-convene, to draw together the parts of myself that will be your parts also. It is time to put myself to work for you,” I say, sandwich crumbs fireworking from my mouthhole. My eyes widen, whitening with silver winter light.

Your nose dips into your coffee as you attempt both to look down, away from me, and sip. The barista cleans a glass.

“Listen,” I tell you, gesturing with the sandwich. “That’s why WhatAWordIsFor.com is around. This is important. I’m a creative guy.”

The bread flops like grandma lips, puckered in crust. Inside is grandma tongue, an angry meat, griping at you as grandma did when you were small and new.

“Sonny,” you almost hear me say, “this is where you’re gonna find me to help find yourself. This is where the work will come from. It’s part of a network of websites now — The Weird Salamander — and that’s just that.”

The barista squeaks a hand-towel over a plate, rotates the plate. I take another sandwich bite.

“What do you mean you’re gonna put yourself to work for me?” you say. “What do you mean find myself?”

“I mean I’m available now,” I say. “I’m available to work. I’m gathering all my skills up as a Creative Director and I’m giving them to you and I’m going to write about them on WhatAWordIsFor.com and also really beef up the network, you know, get The Weird Salamander up and going.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah, it is okay. It’s going to be okay for sure. This site will be the place where you can read about my creative endeavors and thoughts on what it means to be creative for people, real humans, not just for the yearning obsessive fire in my belly or for the need for things to be aesthetically pleasing and functional. Not just another creative resource, but a narrative set to solve the truer creative problems of the world with a history of how we encounter them. You know?”

“Okay.”

“Let’s promise each other we’ll find ourselves back here regularly.”

“I can’t promise anything.”

“Well, I can. And that’s how you’ll find yourself again. Returning to learn what a creative director thinks about the work he makes and encounters.”

“I might come back again? I’m just trying to have a coffee, here. We’ve never met.”

I put my sandwich down. The barista is still. Our eyes lock and you can tell my age, my determination, my nebulous want to be helpful.

“Let me introduce you to the newly self-convened me: hello. This is a website where I will talk about creativity.”